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BETA BEAT: Anonymous announced its intention to “destroy” Westboro Baptist Church this weekend following news that the group would be picketing the funerals of children who died in Friday’s horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Now, infamous 15-year-old hacker Cosmo the God of the Underground Nazi Hacktivist Group (UGNazi) appears to have joined the fray. The Twitter account of much-reviled Westboro spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper has been hacked, and Cosmo is claiming responsibility. Ms. Phelps-Roper is the daughter of Fred Phelps, who is the head of the WBC. Cosmo and the UG Nazi crew gained notoriety over the past year for hacking sites like 4chan, NASDAQ and CIA.gov, many of which they say were in protest of SOPA. Cosmo himself, who lives in Long Beach and turns 16 in March, is a famed teen hacker, and just last month was sentenced in juvenile court for felonies such as credit card theft and online impersonation. Placed on probation until his 21st birthday, Cosmo isn’t allowed to use the Internet without consent from a parole officer or have any contact with members of Anonymous or UG Nazi. MORE

WIRED: Cosmo is huge — 6 foot 7 and 220 pounds the last time he was weighed, at a detention facility in Long Beach, California on June 26. And yet he’s getting bigger, because Cosmo — also known as Cosmo the God, the social-engineering mastermind who weaseled his way past security systems at Amazon, Apple, AT&T, PayPal, AOL, Netflix, Network Solutions, and Microsoft — is just 15 years old. He turns 16 next March, and he may very well do so inside a prison cell. Cosmo was arrested along with dozens of others in a recent multi-state FBI sting targeting credit card fraud. It is the day before his court date, but he doesn’t know which task force is investigating him or the name of his public defender. He doesn’t even know what he’s been charged with. It’s tough to narrow it down; he freely admits to participation in a wide array of crimes. With his group, UGNazi (short for “underground nazi” and pronounced “you-gee” not “uhg”), Cosmo took part in some of the most notorious hacks of the year. Throughout the winter and spring, they DDoS’ed all manner of government and financial sites, including NASDAQ, ca.gov, and CIA.gov, which they took down for a matter of hours in April. They bypassed Google two step, hijacked 4chan’s DNS and redirected it to their own Twitter feed, and repeatedly posted Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s address and Social Security number online. After breaking into one billing agency using social-engineering techniques this past May, they proceeded to dump some 500,000 credit card numbers online. Cosmo was the social engineer for the crew, a specialist in talking his way past security barriers. His arsenal of tricks held clever-yet-idiot-proof ways of getting into accounts on Amazon, Apple, AOL, PayPal, Best Buy, Buy.com, Live.com (think: Hotmail, Outlook, Xbox) and more. He can hijack phone numbers from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and your local telco. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: The 15-year-old UG Nazi hacker known as Cosmo* or Cosmo the God was sentenced in juvenile court on Wednesday in Long Beach, California. According to Cosmo, he pleaded guilty to multiple felonies in exchange for a probation, encompassing all the charges brought against him, which included charges based on credit card fraud, identity theft, bomb threats, and online impersonation. […] According to Cosmo, the terms of the plea place him on probation until his 21st birthday. During that time, he cannot use the internet without prior consent from his parole officer. Nor will he be allowed to use the Internet in an unsupervised manner, or for any purposes other than education-related ones. He is required to hand over all of his account logins and passwords. He must disclose in writing any devices that he has access to that have the capability to connect to a network. He is prohibited from having contact with any members or associates of UG Nazi or Anonymous, along with a specified list of other individuals. He had to forfeit all the computers and other items seized in the raid on his home. Also, according to Cosmo, violating any of these terms will result in a three-year prison term. MORE

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Monday, December 17th, 2012 at
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